The walk to the station took round 12 minutes, and along the way, we thought that people had come overnight and emptied all of the rubbish bins in the streets. Man, there was rubbish everywhere ! Then we realised that there must have been a lot of people out and about the pervious evening, perhaps to celebrate June 1, as most of the rubbish was made up of beer bottles, cans and fast food wrappers.
We got to the station at about 5.55am, and found that the main front doors were shut ! Bugger ! I was a little stessed, as our train was leaving in about 12 minutes . . . But then. Followed some locals in the 'know' and found a side entrance. Once inside, the station was both vibrant with the real travellers and the remnants of the revellers, often lying on the ground fast asleep. Not sure they were going to catch the 6.12am to St Petersburg. . . :)
We found our train, found our seats, settled down. Train left on time. Trip took 3 1/2 hours, and it was a good, fast, clean train. Even had free wifi on board.
We got out of the station in St Petersburg, got our bearings and started walking. Bear in mind, that we were not exactly 100% sure where out hotel was! as we booked thought Flight Centre and they did not have an address on the booking confirmation. When in Helsinki and on the train, I tried to find the hotel on the Flight Centre web site, or on bookings.com or on expedia.com or even on google - but we could not find it anywhere. A bit of a concern, but we trudged in the general direction where we assumed the hotel would be. Hotel St Petersburg. How hard can it be ?
We found our hotel. It was big, it was obvious, and a classic good, bad and the ugly.
The ugly was the terrible state of disrepair most parts of the hotel were in. Perhaps 30 years ago, this would have been a nice hotel, but now it was falling to pieces.
The bad ? There are 7 elevators, but only three working, it is at least 130 paces from the elevator to our room. Our room is very simple.
The good ? Well, this makes up for the bad and the ugly. We are on the fourth floor, and overlook the river, . Fantastic view, both in day time and night time. Highly recommended.
We settled in the room. Just before leaving the holt, we noticed a poster promoting the famous 'Swan Lake' ballet, and it happened to be on in the ballroom of our hotel, that night ! We decided to try to come back by 7pm to see if we could get tickets. Something to look forward to.
From our room, we could see where we wanted to get to. It did not seem far. But, we underestimated by far the distances one needed to travel in St Petersburg. Warning to future travellers : make sure your hotel is within walking distance to the Hermitage museum and close to the Nevsky Prospect.
We walked, walked, and walked. It seemed to go on forever. The rivers (the Neva) is very wide, the buildings are very long. Anyway, it took us about an hour to walk to where we wanted to go. The queues to the Hermitage were so long, we decided to give this one a miss . So, we decided to go on a boat cruise along the river and the canals. Around 1h and 30m. A fantastic way to spend the afternoon and to get to know St Petersburg. The sense of long distances was engrained in our minds.
At the end of the cruise, we walked along the Nevsky Prospect and found a nice cafe on the first floor in a book shop. The view blew us away. It was of the Kazan Cathdral. Amazing. Fantastic. Another kick-arse monument in your face. (St Petersburg is full of what I call kick-arse buildings, monuments and cathedrals... In other words, they are big, and I mean, big, and very impressive).
Anyway, we continued to walk towards another nice Cathdral, called Church of our Saviour on the Spilled Blood. Long name, but another amazing kick-arse monument, museum, cathedral.
We could not get it as it closed at 6pm, se we decided to walk back to our hotel. We had to get back close to 7pm to see if we could get tickets to the ballet. We got back at 7.12 and did get tickets in the middle of the third row. A shower and clean (more formal) clothes helped us feel more part of the crowd (most folks were dressed up for the evening).
The ballet of Swan Lake was very good. World class. Being so close, we could see the facial expressions of all of the dancers and almost reach out the right hand side of the live orchestra. The oboe soloist was less than 3 meters in front of me. What a fantastic experience.
The performance finished just after 10pm. We were on a high, so went to the bar and had some drinks and a cake. As we looked outside, realised that the sun had not set. In fact, the sun had snuck in between the clouds and the horizon and lit up the city . Another amazing St Petersburg site.
All in all, a very long, full and fulfilling day ! Not sure we can keep this pace going, but we are certainly getting value for money !
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